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Monday, 11 February 2013

Generic Fantasy Skirmish: More Thoughts

So, I started back at converting In The Emperor's Name to represent a fantasy skirmish system. I mean, sure, there are dozens of skirmish systems floating about the net for free, there's Mordheim and such, but ItEN is just such a cool little game, and it's very easy to hack, change, add new Retinues and such, that I couldn't resist.

I had thought about making my own system (based off d10s, similar to the new Mongoose Judge Dredd game), but meh - too much work. Maybe some day...

So, the current work is to:

Convert and re-jigger the weapons list (many of the unpowered melee weapons in the list share the same stats, which would make a game like this kinda boring), rewrite the Ranged weapons options (as a fantasy game, hand-to-hand is more appropriate - so maybe shorten the ranges, cut out most of the "heavy" weapons but leave the option to buy greatbows/flintlocks/cannons for a slightly higher price).

Work out a rule to represent smaller combatants (ensuring they have a lower Grit score, etc), possibly with a special rule...

Small - characters with this ability can only use Light weapons and cannot wear Heavy armour, but can move through difficult terrain and full speed, and gain... some other bonus I haven't thought of yet.

Spell Lists - most Warbands will have access to a Caster unit (Wizard/Shaman/Cleric/whatever), who can buy spells, but each will only have access to a handful of possible Spell Lists - like, Wood Elves can buy spells from the Nature lists, Dwarves from the Rune-smith list, etc. Currently thinking of the following:

Death/Necromancy (debuffs, allows access to Undead in the Warband)

Life/Healing (all buffs)

War (all offense)

Shadow/Illusion (some debuffs, some offense, some defense)

Nature (battlefield control, healing, maybe some summon-type stuff)

Write out the Retinue/Warband lists. So far, my thoughts are:

Humans - the "baseline", stats-wise. Fairly balanced, with a variety of troop-types available.

Dwarves - have a higher Grit than others, mostly tough "tank" units, with a Rune-wizard available (using spells that buff others and themselves), as well as the option to buy things like Heavy Bolt Throwers and all that nonsense.

Elves - three separate lists so far...

High Elves - any High Elf model can buy Spells for 10 points, and their Mages can buy them for 5 points. A wide selection of spell-lists available.

Kobolds - poor stats, but so cheap you can buy dozens of the little buggers. Comes with access to the Draconic Spell List.

The Green Tide - Orcs (tough but slow), Hobgoblins (nice and balanced), Goblins (small and sneaky), Ogres (big and tough) who might get a re-do of the rules for Stupidity, maybe allow another Beast-tamer unit, gain access to the War Spell List.

The Forces of Darkness - something like the classic Warriors of Chaos, big, tough, slow, access to some weird special units, and stuff like the War and Death Spell Lists.

Adventurers - more like "Hired Guns", to be purchased by any army (using the Strange Ally rule), but include an option to take them for no extra cost in certain warbands (like the Elven Ranger being free to work with the Elven Warbands, but costing extra points in the Human Warband).

And, of course, a few others as they come to me.

One thing that caught my eye in ItEN was the Appendix for using the game to play Space Hulk-style games - which really flipped a switch somewhere. Mainly because, it would be simple enough to use those rules as a framework to create a "dungeon crawl"-style scenario for the game - perfect! I might add rules for the Defending Warband to buy traps, turn it into a real Tucker's Kobolds deal...